My whole family was struck with the flu this past weekend.  It was pretty crappy and we are finally crawling out of the dark flu hole.  Luckily there was one 40 degree day where we could open all the windows and get some fresh air, but now it’s back down to 10 where I now believe it will stay forever.  The flu was just another thing that got in between me and my mobile–february was just packed with those thing, dammit.  It’s now officially half done and as soon as I get my hands on a glue gun, I’ll finish it up and pack it off.   It’s four tiny houses: a cottage, an ice house, a barn, and a plain ol’ house.  I knew I wanted to do houses and I was first inspired by a sardine box .  I was planning to make them all out of packaging, but after an hour wandering through the grocery store I discovered there is a lot of ugly packaging.  Then I thought I could use the fusible timtex I had and the houses would have looked really nice in all natural linen, but they had no windows which was a little weird.  I could have embroidered all the details on, but I was late with the mobile already.  Then I found this amazing site and was back to thinking about paper.  So after another hour spent in the foreign territory of decorative paper, I thought I have books coming out my ears at home why don’t I just use one of them.   I found a great old Dr. Spock baby book which is perfect because my partner just had a baby (hint! hint!).  I mod podged the pages to either side of poster board, then cut out the details and folded it up.

I feel bad that I’m late on my own swap, but my creative process is particularly slow and I’m happy with how all the houses turned out.  There are more pictures on my flickr account and be sure to stop by the mobile swap group to see all the procrastinator’s mobiles (they are my people) and just the amazing variety of work that’s there.  I’m for sure going to host another mobile swap next January, so if you missed this one don’t worry.  I should probably start working on that one now just so I finish in time.

I never did say that I sold one of my diggers, but I did! And on my birthday to boot! My little floral digger was sent off to Jen at scissorspaperglue and I sent the polka dot digger off to New York yesterday morning. I knew I wanted to make the packaging for my toys and after a little brainstorming I came up with this simple drawstring bag. It’s made of muslin and I figured out how to do french seams just so I wouldn’t have to line it (they’re not really hard at all you just have to get over putting wrong sides together, but corners I had trouble with–anyone out there have any advice?). I also get to use my automatic button holer (holer, really? hole maker maybe?) which makes me feel like I know what I’m doing–always a treat. At first I wanted to embroider “my digger,” but found some passable stamps at Joann’s instead. It gives me a place to put the name of my shop as well. And I finally got my felt rocks up in the shop and made a small linen drawstring bag for them too.

The rocks turned out nice, I think, but they are less for the diggers and more for decoration really. I really like the moss covered ones and I may just do a couple set of those. But back to the drawstring bags. For a while now I’ve had the idea to make simple drawstring bags for toys. There are just so many damn toys and our toys are getting smaller and more complicated now–they need to be contained! The bags would be made of linen or a linen/cotton blend or even just muslin, and maybe lined or not lined, and with trains or blocks or dinosaurs or animals on the front either stitched or appliqued. And the reason they aren’t made yet is because I can’t decide on anything. Is linen too precious for a toy bag? Is muslin too cheap? Would embroidery get snagged or does applique look too slapped together? Would you even buy a toy bag? I need some feedback from the mamas (and papas) out there. I have a little craft fair coming up in march (!) and I think this would be something I could make a bunch of and that would go over well (the craft fair is also a children’s clothes and toys consignment sale–it’s called half pint resale and my very talented and energetic friend put it all together!). So leave a comment and help me decide, because I’ve been thinking about these silly little bags for too long now.

The mobile swap is “over,” but I am still working on mine and I know there are other procrastinators out there scrambling to finish. So I thought I’d post a few more lovely ones from the flickr mobile swap group this week. The four above stuck out because of their unique construction. The first is a promotional piece from Hatch Designs that was posted by Dave from grainedit.com. I don’t think it’s actually for the swap, but a bird mobile that pops out of egg carton material is too fantastic to not show you. The next is by Elizabeth from e p i t a. It’s not finished, but what a great idea–like sticking baseball cards in your dirt bikes, but in mobile form. The bottom left picture is from Terry at easebetweennotches.blogspot.com. Her idea was to make a mobile that looked like a bouquet of flowers turned upside down. It turned out great and the cone hides all the messy construction bits but still looks super stylish. Well done! The last is a simple felt garland hung from one end. Elizabeth from ohfransson.com used a pattern from a japanese craft book to make this sweet little mobile (that doubles as a garland). These and all the other fantastic mobiles are on the flickr mobile swap group. Mine will be done soon, I hope. I think it’s probably in bad taste for the swap organizer to be late for the swap, but it’s my party. I’ve had the pattern done for a week now, but keep changing my mind when it comes to what material to use. It’s time to just fish or cut bait.

I have been absent from this little blog for a bit. We’ve had guests and will have many more in the coming weeks, so you’ll only hear from me on and off for a while. If you actually know me, well, just call instead of stalking me on the internet, silly.

There hasn’t been much time for making, but I did manage to try my hand at wet felting. I bought a big bag of lovely colored roving at a garage sale this summer and have been meaning to try it ever since. I thought it would be nice to sell a little bag of felted rocks along side my diggers. Wet felting is ridiculously easy, but wet felting on details was not so easy. A good friend told me that white wool doesn’t felt as easily (because of the bleach?) which is probably why I was swearing up a storm trying to put the tiny stripes on the rocks. But I haven’t given up. I really like the rocks especially in bright colors and I think I’m going to try to embroider some rock like details on them. Maybe even some moss!

this was a lot harder than it looks.  And even though it only needs a few buttons (wheels, headlights, tail lights) I can’t bring myself to finish it.  I thought I’d move on from diggers and try my hand at dump trucks.  The body of the truck wasn’t so bad–a lot of confusing parts, but it worked out okay.  But the actually dumping part (I have to learn me some technical terms if I’m going to keep making these things) was pretty damn frustrating.  I used timtex (well something like timtex but fusable–it was all they had–and I just fused both sides to cotton batting) and holy crap is that stuff hard to deal with.  Granted I probably shouldn’t be using it on something so small, but I couldn’t figure out how to make all the sides of the dumper sturdy.  It comes together just like a bag with a lining would, except if your bag has an extra thick layer of stiff as hell interfacing then it turns out that the inside is smaller than the outside and the lining you made has to be remade smaller (but whoops not that small, make it again).  Turning that sucker out was such a pain that I had to take a break half way through.  But now that I’m looking at it a day later (and complaining all over the place about it) I’m starting to like it again.  So really I have to rethink the pattern–any suggestions?  But I am happy about on thing: it dumps.